Electric air compressors are commonly used to inflate a wide range of consumer articles such as tires, air mattresses, rafts, swimming pools and balls. The suitability of an air compressor for such applications is determined primarily by two criteria, the airflow rate and the maximum pressure developed by the compressor. These criteria determine whether the compressor is capable of inflating the article to the desired pressure and the length of time required to inflate the article to the desired pressure. Consumer air compressors cannot be cost effectively designed to rapidly inflate articles having a wide range of air volumes and internal air pressures. Therefore, the design of consumer air compressors must be a compromise.
One application for which most consumer air compressors do not provide efficient inflation is articles having a large air volume and a relatively low air pressure such as air mattresses. For example, an air mattress which is 58".times.77".times.8" in size has an air volume of approximately 21 cubic feet at 0.1 psig. air pressure. To inflate such a mattress with one commercially available air compressor, which is rated at 1.0 cubic feet per minute (cfm) at 30 pounds per square inch (psi), approximately 16.5 minutes are required. It would, of course, be desirable to provide a low cost accessory for a compressor for reducing the inflation time.
In addition to time consuming inflation, another problem arising from the use of high air volume, low pressure inflatable articles is that there is no efficient means of deflating the article for storage or transport. Thus it would be desirable to provide a low cost accessory for a compressor for rapidly deflating an article.
Accordingly, the primary object of this invention is to provide an accessory for a pressurized air source, (preferably, an air compressor) for inflating and deflating high volume, low pressure articles and a method for using the accessory for inflating and deflating such articles. Still another object is to provide an accessory which is rapidly and easily convertable between an accessory for inflating an article and an accessory for deflating an article.